


Tide

by 3tequilafloor



Series: In Bed [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Chronic Illness, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Illnesses, Self-Harm, Shapeshifting, Violence, Vomiting, Werewolf, lycanthropy, transformations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7593058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3tequilafloor/pseuds/3tequilafloor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>Lament under a full moon.</p><p> <b>From the prompts at <a href="http://sickdaysofficial.tumblr.com/post/146177494224/sick-days-prompts">Sick Days</a> on Tumblr. <i>July 26: Chronic illness</i></b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tide

Lazy dust motes drift aimlessly through what little light makes it in through the small, blackened cellar window. Remus scatters them when he steps down the last of the landing, and makes them disappear into that strange space between visibility and unknown corners of existence when he sheds a soft light on the room. Fungus grows in a damp, leaky corner of the barren stone room. Dust covers everything in a thin layer, streaked in scratches, footprints, and other odd ways from last month's activities. The scents of rust, old blood, stress hormones, all linger in the stale air. There just isn't much to be done about it. No amount of cleaning charms can ever truly clear away that particular foul mixture of spilled bodily fluids. 

The fetters hold tight when he checks them and checks them again, just as he's done every day for the past several days. He'll break them before the night is over, of course. No shackles, no manacles, no cuffs ever truly hold. They help, though. It's as much as he can hope for anymore. There was a time when he hoped easily and fervently, but these days, Remus doesn't hope for much. 

The aches, the sharp pains, and the nausea of the past few days have receded and been replaced with an anxious, energetic thrum. It's impossible to forget what tonight will bring. His blood sings, his body feels lean, light, powerful, and his mind is clouded with dread. The pull of the ocean tides, the gravity of the moon are nothing new to him of course. Rather, he's seen the moon loop through its phases hundreds of times. There's a chart somewhere in the attic, out of date since 1981, gifted by a friend. The chart records every full moon of his lifetime, notated to include every one that's pained him in this way. The other important notation on the chart, is every moon that hasn't pained him as badly as they do now. It's only a drop in the bucket, but for a few years that were all too short lived, Remus suffered through his moon cycles in good company. The pains of fear and loneliness briefly, blissfully left him during those years, and somehow it had made the physical agonies so much less important.

Like the moon diary, Remus feels frozen in time. There is still so much left to chart, but no one to put quill to paper and do so. If there is a space between visibility and unknown corners of existence that part-time humans can inhabit, Remus does his best to stay there. Shadows are his safety, and his only defense. The fetters never hold. 

He strips down and begins the elaborate process of chaining himself in. The door upstairs is significantly reinforced, but if he had the whole night to try and break it down he isn't certain that he couldn't accomplish the task. Perhaps he'd simply break himself trying. Really, the chains are for his own safety as much as anyone else's. He needs them for a few more years. There's something far more important at stake than his own health, but he can't very well protect anyone else without making the effort to keep himself reasonably unharmed. It's a constant, exhausting struggle, but he'll do it a thousand times more if that's what he needs to do. Some things are just more important than the sad, dimmed light of the soul bent on the facets of that diamond called life. Enduring may not alleviate the yoke of guilt that he carries, but it's the least that Remus can do to try to make things as right as they ever will be again.

The faint light fades, and the beast surfaces. Transformation is a ripping, tearing, warping, searing hot torture. He screams through it, raw, primal pain. Those few moments before his sentience dulls, recedes and finally changes entirely are a lifetime. When they're through, the real torture begins. 

Remus howls with rage, thrashing and snarling against the fetters. He twists, writhes, tanks and dives in his efforts to shake them. The scent of blood spills fresh and thick as he rubs his paws, neck, and flank raw in the madness. There are no familiar scents to keep him company, but the wolf doesn't remember. The wolf wants freedom, wants to run with the stag and wrestle with the big black dog, snap at the rat. In the deepest recesses of consciousness, Remus knows that it will never be again. The stag and the rat are dead, the traitorous, mercilessly dog locked forever away in a suitably soulless existence. The only relief to his grief is when the grief of the wolf takes over instead. 

On this night, the wolf grieves so hard that the last few hours are passed in a state of unconsciousness following an ill fated attempt to smash the barricades by brute force via headbutting. When dawn comes, Remus awakes in human skin again. He rather wishes that he hadn't. 

The overwhelming stench of freshly spilled blood turns his stomach, but even the slightest movement is torment to his battered body. The best Remus can manages is to roll his upper body sideways as he retches up blood, fur, bone chips, bits of stone, and bile. His throat is raw from howling and screaming. His head thumps rhythmically, and the room spins in hazy circles around him. Probably a concussion. Remus groans, but even groaning hurts. His side is a mess of contusions, abrasions and lacerations. There's heavy blunt force trauma not only to his head, but to the length of his flank and hindquarters as well. The little finger on his left hand is broken and partially severed, hanging on more by skin than anything else. Remus vomits again, and then endures the pain of turning his torso to the other side. Getting up out of the pool of blood and sickness is beyond him at the moment, but he's not about to let himself aspirate it. 

Waking these days is the worst part. It always was awful, but in his childhood and his youth he'd at least never been truly alone for the aftermath. His parents would be there with water for his parched throat, dressings and healing spells for the worst of his wounds. Later, there had been the matron at school, Madam Pomfrey. In between and after, there had been James, Sirius, Peter, and eventually Lily. Really, if he's honest about it, Remus has no right to mourn the loss of their kindnesses. The world itself is by far dimmer without most of them around, but the truth of the matter is that Remus has known far more than his fair share of goodness and kindness in his lifetime. Most of his kind never knew anything of the sort, and he knows that. It makes the loss all the worse, somehow. Now, in the absence of even his poor, long suffering mother, Remus feels the sting so sharply that he worries for a moment he may have broken a bit of rib off badly and punctured a lung. 

Tears leak from his eyes, but they aren't for his pains, nor even for his dead and ruined friendships, his scattered, burdened family, or his hopeless cycle of poverty, pain. The tears are the dirt in his eyes, brought on by the cruel and unstoppable passage of time. They're a relief in a way. A reminder that no one moment can hold him, not those few truly, blissfully good years. Neither these brutally, painfully awkward ones in between now and his next moment of calling, whenever that might come. Whatever sway the moon holds over him is great, but he won't have to bear the brunt of it for another 29.5 days. That will be a different time, a different moon cycle, perhaps a different world. Probably not that last one, but there ought to be hope. Remus doesn't hope for many things anymore, but in his mind if not his heart, he wants very badly to hold out hope for just a little bit of hope. 

At the very least he knows that somewhere out there in the world, a tiny miraculous bit of the best days of his life still lives on. A miraculous baby, no, a boy now, carries the seed of potential hope for them all. Maybe not for Remus himself per se, but certainly, possibly, for their very world and existence. It's enough to allow him the strength to let go, passing back out into the uneasy moors of unconsciousness for a few hours longer before he truly has to face what temporary pains the day may bring him. They're not entirely lost to the darkness yet. Somewhere, there's still a growing ember of light.


End file.
